Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 3, 1994 TAG: 9406030104
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-8 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE:
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Tech's vehicle, the Solaray IIA, had a healthy, 40-minute lead over the Indiana school when the teams stopped over for the night Wednesday at Virginia Tech. "With some luck, they'll keep that," said mechanical engineering Professor Charles Reinholtz.
A third team, from University of Massachusetts at Lowell, was a last-minute no-show.
Thursday morning, the two vehicles resumed the 500-mile race, starting off about 20 minutes apart. The next stop was James Madison University in Harrisonburg.
The cars are using U.S. 11. Race rules call for solar vehicles to pull over periodically and let faster traffic pass by. The winner is the vehicle with the best cumulative time over the five-day race.
Meanwhile, an engineering team from Virginia Tech has taken top honors in the Society of Automotive Engineers' mini-Baja car Eastern regional competition, held over the Memorial Day weekend in Montreal.
The competition pitted all-terrain vehicles from about 40 schools. Tech's car not only placed first overall, but first in the endurance run, a grueling, three-hour race that covered rough terrain, water deep enough to float the vehicle and plenty of mud and sand. "It's sort of the race that weeds out the lesser cars," said Tony Ganino, one of the six team members who made the trip to Canada for the competition.
He and team leader Jay Hall divvied up the driving duties for the arduous trek.
The Tech car also finished first in design, acceleration and land maneuverability. Ganino - a recent Tech graduate who plans to attend graduate school there - said the vehicle also did well in several other categories.
All the mini-Baja cars are built around a stock 8 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine. About two dozen students in all were involved in putting the car together as part of their mechanical engineering coursework.
Tech's winning vehicle - still spattered with mud - is on display in the lobby of Randolph Hall on the university campus.
A third team of students also recently competed in half-scale Indy-style formula cars. Reinholtz called Tech's formula car - which can accelerate from zero to 60 in 4.3 seconds - "probably the fastest car in the state of Virginia," but he said the vehicle suffered from mechanical troubles and fared poorly in the competition.
"They were real disappointed," he said.
Reinholtz said the car handles like a slot car. "It's a really impressive little vehicle," he said.
Virginia Tech also has been chosen as one of 12 finalists in the 1995 annual hybrid electric vehicle challenge. The competition calls for engineering students to modify a conventional car to run on a small, natural-gas engine and generator that's coupled to electric batteries and a motor.
by CNB